Two Formula 1 races in one weekend is nothing new

The idea for two races in one weekend has been floating around for a while now, and in the circumstances it’s both a practical and intriguing suggestion. But if it gets the green light for Silverstone, it will only partially mark a new precedent for F1. Sure, it would be a first in terms of world championship grands prix, but the circuit has a history of hosting two contemporary F1 races in one weekend before, on two occasions half a century ago.

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F1’s ‘pointless races’

Non-championship F1 races used to be a core ingredient of motor racing seasons, before Bernie Ecclestone ushered in the modern, homogenised big-money era for the world championship in the 1980s. ‘Pointless races’ mattered because they offered extra earning opportunities for teams, drivers and circuits, with both start money and prize money on offer from significant sponsorship deals. The tracks loved these races because F1 always drew big crowds, especially if the star names of the day were on the entry.

Silverstone’s BRDC International Trophy was among the most established and prestigious of these races, from its founding in 1949. Scheduled each year in April, in its early years it nearly always drew a field at least the equal of the British Grand Prix itself and was a popular spring fixture for fans until 1978. After that, the International Trophy was passed down to Formula 2 and Formula 3000 and survives today as a cherished historic meeting run by the Silverstone-based Historic Sports Car Club.

Brands Hatch vs. Silverstone

Even by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the number of non-championship F1 races was beginning to dwindle as focus gradually began to sharpen fully on world championship grands prix. But from 1965, the International Trophy had a regular rival for its status as the most prominent non-championship fixture. John Webb, the energetic impresario at Brands Hatch, introduced the Race of Champions to run each March and shook things up further by playing around with the format of his races. Unshackled from world championship status, that first Race of Champions ran over two heats for an aggregate result, and he took things further in 1967 adding a final to the format to make three races in a day.

F1 teams and, to an extent its fans too, tend to be naturally conservative and the Race of Champions thereafter reverted to a single-race format, run over a shorter distance than a points-counting grand prix. But at Silverstone for two years – 1970 and ’71 – the International Trophy adopted the heats format, perhaps as a way of boosting interest as grid numbers started to dwindle. The BRDC had already opened up the race to Formula 5000 runners to bolster the thinning F1 entry.

1970: Amon finally wins an F1 race

Popular Kiwi Chris Amon is forever remembered as F1’s most unlucky driver. Despite being one of the fastest and most respected of his era, somehow he never won a world championship grand prix. But he did win two non-championship races, both of them double-heat affairs, and the first was the International Trophy in 1970.

That season, he’d run out of patience with Ferrari and joined ‘the new kids in town’: March, co-founded among others by a smooth-talking chap named Max Mosley. Amon signed to drive the works STP-backed 701, while Tyrrell ran another of the new cars for world champion Jackie Stewart in the wake of its split from Matra. Stewart was not impressed, despite having already carried the car to victories at the Spanish Grand Prix and the Race of Champions at Brands. Still, at Silverstone, Amon would give the 701 its third consecutive F1 win – even if he would only cross the line first in one of the two 26-lap heats.

In the first, Amon led the way from Denny Hulme’s McLaren, Stewart and Jack Brabham, until fellow Kiwi Hulme pitted with a loose wheel and Brabham coasted to a halt at Stowe corner on lap 23 with a blown engine. That elevated promising brewery heir Piers Courage to third in the new de Tomaso (dubbed the ‘Tomato’) run by his friend Frank Williams. In practice, Stewart had even taken the de Tomaso out for a few laps to give Courage and Williams a second opinion on the car designed by respected Italian engineer Gian Paolo Dallara – but it was perhaps also a sign of his dissatisfaction with his own March.

In heat two, Peter Gethin briefly and sensationally led in a McLaren Formula 5000, foreshadowing his amazing Race of Champions win in a Chevron B24 three years later. But soon Stewart hit the front, with Amon hot on his heels. Following the first heat, there was no pressure on Chris to pass his friend and he’d cross the line two seconds down on the blue March to claim the aggregate win. He’d take another two-heat non-championship win the following year in Argentina, by then driving for Matra. As for the 701, as Stewart suspected it flattered to deceive after its stunning first months: it never won another race.

1971: Graham Hill’s final F1 victory

The second consecutive and final two-heat International Trophy also proved to be a significant occasion as Graham Hill claimed what would be his final win in an F1 car.

The two-time champion was considered something of a spent force by this stage of his F1 career, but he would doggedly race on until 1975. At this time, he had joined Brabham to drive the eccentric ‘lobster claw’ BT34. Stewart won the first heat for Tyrrell, but a stuck throttle ruled him out in the second, opening the door in a race of high attrition for Hill’s first F1 win for two years.

The race also marked the first appearance for Colin Chapman’s Lotus 56B turbine-powered F1 car, Emerson Fittipaldi going third fastest in practice before retiring in the first heat after just two laps with suspension trouble. And that man Gethin starred once again, ending up second overall in his F5000 McLaren M14.

So the precedence is set: if F1 does put on two races on the same weekend at Silverstone in July, history suggests we should expect the unexpected. Even if there isn’t a crowd in attendance to watch it.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.